Experiments in Liberation, Part II: Sunset on Blue Monday

In September of 2020, when the then-POTUS issued an executive order banning DEI trainings—like the one that my company was becoming known for delivering—I remember exactly how I responded. I saw the headline, and read the first few paragraphs of the order. I closed my laptop, walked upstairs, and went straight back to bed.?

I remember the email we were forwarded, not even an hour later, from a federally funded client—a whistle blown—saying Wayfinding Partners “deals in anti-American propaganda,” that we “promote the illegal and dangerous ideas of White Supremacy Culture and critical race theory,” that we would no longer be an “appropriate” vendor. I prepared for more of such emails to come in.?

It was still morning. I hadn’t yet had my first meeting, but I was already done with the day. I pulled the covers over my head, stayed in bed until it was over.?

So much has changed since that day, in my own life and everywhere I look. But in other very real ways, that day hasn’t actually ended.?

Morning stretched into afternoon, evening, and into the summer of 2022—Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the toll was instantly broad and devastating—especially for LGBTQ+ and Black and brown people and any already vulnerable group . But the day went on, and then it was the summer of 2023—and with another 6-3 vote, six decades of precedent were reversed, rejecting the category of race as one of the many factors that inform college admissions decisions.?

I don’t remember what I did when I heard about these decisions, which felt only hours apart from each other. I was likely already numb, or whiplashed, from the recent years of racial re-reckoning (and then the racial re-reckoning-recoil) to have a visceral response.?

Plus by the time UNC and Harvard happened, my life was already unrecognizable to me.?

My divorce was entering a particularly painful stage. I’d just moved back into my old home—the one I first knew with my ex-husband—after months of couch-surfing and temporary living spaces. Uprooted. Newly planted. So very many boxes. I was also just about to begin the first cycle of my fertility journey, and was preparing myself for what that would require—daily injections, daily monitoring appointments, surgery, repeat. Wondering when the Supreme Court might come for my frozen eggs.?

And before I could actually contemplate the latest news cycle, or summon the energy to have something profound to say about what was happening to us—Black Women, Americans, workers, humans, or any other “us” I am a part of—there was something else to look at. Another development in my separation, another 10-week menstrual cycle, another fiscal challenge at work. I went on with my day, or it went on with me.

If that three-year day had a name, it would have to be Blue Monday . There’s a reason why Annie Lee’s famous painting seemed to make a resurgence in online spaces, throughout the pandemic and America’s latest racial reckoning. And why everything about that piece (the hue, the droop, the posture, the determination, the woman herself—the way you can almost feel the pain in her upper back and shoulders, the way her head seems suspended by the sheer force of will, hovering above despair and yet never giving into it) spoke directly to the sense of living through that years-long day.?

That painting is an inheritance Black women pass down and around to each other. It communicates the un-communicate-able. It’s the nod Black people give to each other across a room full of white people. And so it’s no surprise we were sharing it left and right on social media. Seeking the solace that only comes from being seen.????

I understand something about cycles. About seasons. About the past, and how it is never done with us. About return—and how insight can lead us back to where we are called, but of course we never quite come home again. And about possibility, and the future.?

I knew that I’d lived this Blue Monday before, as did my ancestors. And I knew that this time around, despite its familiarity, the day was different than it was before. And that freedom lives in those spaces of difference.

Remember how, in 2020, we drew from our history to find the phrase that captured the moment? “Bone-tired.”?

I was exhausted. Black women were exhausted. Bone-tired. Blue Monday was here again (or, maybe, still). And in response to that deep, hollow sense of depletion, I did what so many others did—what the woman in Lee’s painting had clearly done, many times before, and was about to do again. I got up. (And went back to bed. And got up, again and again and again and. . .) I spent so much of the next part of that Blue Monday talking to white people (and, let’s be honest, some Black and brown people, too) about what this exhaustion meant. Always one too many times—what it felt like, the 400-year history of why it feels like that. Stopping myself when it started to feel like I was justifying my pain, and then giving them the solution to the problem that they benefit from—what was required of them to become true “allies” (no, “accomplices”; no again, co-conspirators) so that we might collectively move ourselves out of such extractive and dehumanizing systems.?

As I write this, it is 2024. We’ve had more political developments, more Supreme Court decisions (presidential “immunity”, the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness, the end of Chevron deference…). It’s summer again. Another election season is ramping up and winding down. It is the first anniversary of moving back into my home—starting over again.?

Blue Monday doesn’t seem to be done with me yet. But there is movement in the sky, and I’m no longer feeling “bone-tired.”?

I’m tired, yes. Exhausted. But mostly I am fed up. I’m done. I’m ready for something else.

I’m listening to an inner voice these days that can’t be anything other than that of my grandparents. The voice is telling me, among other things, to lift my head again–-tilt it, and shift my gaze at my off-kilter world. To notice what is, and has always been, available to me—to change and be changed, despite the relentlessness of the day. To recall my power and my magic. Because no court’s decision (neither family nor “Supreme”), no executive order, no policy change—no external force—will pull the sun down on Blue Monday, grant me the chance to rest, and wake up feeling new.?

At the time she painted Blue Monday, Annie Lee was working as chief clerk at a railroad. The job granted her stability, but like most steady jobs, it demanded much of her. Blue Monday is about Lee herself, getting up in the dark morning, summoning the energy to leave the comfort of bed, and preparing herself to enter the winter cold and catch the early bus that would take her to her job—just so that she might do it all over again the next day.?

And so the narrative of Blue Monday is of a familiar relentlessness. Black women facing the same shit over and over again—because, of course, we have to. Because, of course, we pray and hope and work for something better. Because, of course, we (unfortunately?) can.?

But the lesson of Blue Monday is also the story of Lee’s success as an artist. Somehow, she was able to let go, and the perpetual Blue Mondays as she knew them came to an end. She left her job at the railroad, and embraced the risk of building a new life as a painter. One day, she stood up, moved on, and that day ended. There was pain, I’m sure. Struggle, which I refuse to romanticize. But there was also more art, and more joy, and more freedom. The word “resilience” comes to mind—how it’s been used against us, how we need to reclaim it as our own.

I am feeling, similarly, ready to let go and begin again. And as I do, I’m noticing that I am not alone in feeling—still, so very often—mired, stuck. Blue. The day still goes on.?

And again, as ever—if any of this resonates with you, I hope we find community with each other, so that we can sunset these relentless days and find something new together.

This day is ending. Not without pain, or even without (sometimes) hovering just above despair. But this Monday is not eternal, and we have more power than we know.